Understanding how contagion works among financial institutions is a top priority for regulators and policy makers who aim to foster financial stability and to prevent financial crises. Using bank credit default swap (CDS) data, we provide a framework for the evaluation of contagion among banks in different countries and regions during a period of prolonged financial distress. We measure contagion in terms of return spillovers, following a Generalized VAR (GVAR) approach. In addition, we propose an innovative framework to distinguish between two types of contagion: systematic (linked to global factors), and idiosyncratic (linked to bank specific factors). We find evidence of both types of contagion, although the spillover dynamics changed over time. Our measure of systematic contagion is always greater than the idiosyncratic component, thus highlighting the importance of common factors in the propagation of risk spillovers. This indicates that international linkages among banking markets are central to the transmission of shocks.

Recent financial downturns, characterized by the significant failures of firms, have revealed the need to control credit risk. Latest literature has shown that weak corporate governance structures are related to high levels of default risk, leading to financial instability. In this context, we aim to summarize the literature that focuses on the role that internal corporate governance plays in the credit risk of firms, specifically considering three corporate governance components: ownership structure, board structure and financial stakeholders' rights and relations. Additionally, we analyse whether the effectiveness of the internal mechanisms depends on particular key factors, especially the institutional setting and the type of mechanisms considered. Finally, new lines of research are identified for future research.

This paper analyzes the determinants of the cross-sectional variation of the average volatility risk premia for a representative set of portfolios sorted by volatility risk premium beta. The market volatility risk premium and, especially, the default premium are shown to be key risk factors in the cross-sectional variation of average volatility risk premium payoffs. The cross-sectional variation of risk premia seems to reflect a very different behavior of the underlying components of our sample portfolios with respect to credit or financial stress that generates a significant dispersion of the volatility swap pricing of these securities.

This paper is the result of a crowdsourced effort to surface perspectives on the present and future direction of international finance. The authors are researchers in financial economics who attended the INFINITI 2017 conference in the University of Valencia in June 2017 and who participated in the crowdsourcing via the Overleaf platform. This paper highlights the actual state of scientific knowledge in a multitude of fields in finance and proposes different directions for future research.